Talking Science

Talking Science Jay Lemke

Cited in Connected Play:

In 1990, science educator Jay Lemke published the seminal book Talk- ing Science in which he examined classroom discussions between science teachers and students. Lemke particularly focused on how scientific argu- mentation—a cornerstone of what it means to think and act like a scien- tist—was embedded in those interchanges. In Lemke’s words, “Learning

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science means learning to talk science,” and talking science means “observ- ing, classifying, analyzing, discussing, hypothesizing, theorizing, question- ing, challenging, arguing … with the language of science.”9 One way that we sought to evaluate what Whyvillians had learned was simply to see if their language changed during the WhyPox epidemic—did they use differ- ent words when the epidemic hit? Indeed, after studying Whyvillians’ chat before, during, and after the outbreak of WhyPox, we found that the words “pox,” “sick,” and “spot” suddenly spiked during the epidemic and slowly petered out after everyone had recovered.10 So, WhyPox changed the words kids used in Whyville; what other kinds of conversations did it stimulate?